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Monday, September 9, 2013

Minecraft Birthday Party

Over the weekend, my grandson, Dylan turned 10. Back about a month or two ago he decided he wanted to have a Minecraft Birthday Party. Cool idea, since he really loves that game. And considering the popularity of that game, you'd think there'd be lots of Minecraft party supplies around, wouldn't you? Well, think again. There are really zero Minecraft-related party supplies. So what did I say? Challenge accepted. I got into crafty mode and hit the studio to make as many Minecraft treats and decor items as I could.

I've created two collage photos of what we did for our party. I want to share this because I know I was looking all over Pinterest and the Web for ideas myself, and really, thank goodness for Pinterest because that was a big help! So hopefully this will give you some ideas too if you or someone you know is thinking of doing a Minecraft Birthday Part too any time in the future.

Black sheets of "Duck" brand duct tape was my friend for this party. I used to to jazz up plain, bright green cups, which I purchased at the dollar store, with Creeper faces. We put the plastic ware in those cups. I also used it to put creeper faces on Dylan's presents (top right). On the bottom right you'll see some boxes I made to represent the Mincraft blocks/cubes--I created water, cobblestone, wood, and grass (two sizes each) and just stacked a few on each table. The grass ones were also decorated with patterned duct tape; the others were decorated with scrapbook paper. In the two smaller pics (right middle) there is tissue paper grass on top of "grass" tablecloths, and on top of the grass are wood boxes filled with either coal (just black stones I found at the craft store in the floral department) or colored plastic gems, to represent diamonds and other gems. I purchased a few things from Amazon: 2 foam pick axes and one Steve figurine. Not cheap either, so they counted as part of Dylan's gifts! But they were a great addition to the party theme. And the Creeper cake was made at a local bakery. I also made Creeper Punch--forgot to get a pic of that! It was just Sierra Mist and Lime Sherbert--and it was quite tasty!

The key to making all the treats for the Goodie Bags was really just making a lot of Minecraft-themed labels. I used Hershey's nuggets for Minecraft Gold and Silver. I got some green mini frisbees that we personalized for Dylan's party. I made Minecraft labels for little bottles of bubbles; Steve faces for the blowouts, and Minecraft Coal labels for the coal gummy candy (that is really Christmas coal candy, but the label hides the Christmas wording on the package, for the most part). I also made Zombie faces for some green "slime balls" candy I found online. And we got some silver buckets too and put Rolos in them for another form of gold. There was other stuff in the Goodie Bags too--some straws, some pens, some Mike and Ike's candy, and some Minecraft rubber bracelets, which I found on Artfire.

I also decorated two bright green T-Shirts, one for Dylan and one for my granddaughter, Destiny. I made a stencil of a Creeper Face and used fabric paint to get it on the shirts. Destiny is modeling hers in this photo. :)

Dylan's shirt turned out to be a little too small for him. So he wore a different Minecraft shirt, but we put his Creeper shirt to good use. My daughter had the wonderful idea to have everyone sign that shirt so he'd have a nice memento from his 10th birthday. It was a hit! It's hard to write on a T-shirt though, let me tell ya! It was neat though. All in all it was a great day. Everyone had a good time, and most importantly, Dylan had a great Minecraft Birthday!